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In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.
Updike, John

All religions must be tolerated... for... every man must get to heaven his own way.
Great, Frederick the

The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.
Pound, Ezra

Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Bierce, Ambrose

Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
Bierce, Ambrose

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Bacon, Francis

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Jefferson, Thomas

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
Orwell, George

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
Cohen, Chapman

Individual Christians are the only ones really - and Jewish people, those who trust God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - are the only ones that are qualified to have the reign, because hopefully, they will be governed by God and submit to Him.
Robertson, Pat

Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.
Lias, Andrew

Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.
Ingersoll, Robert Green

Fantastic doctrines, like Christianity or Islam or Marxism require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward.
Abbey, Edward

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Einstein, Albert

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Lamott, Anne

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Adams, Douglas

Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.
Schopenhauer, Arthur

If Christian scientists had more science and doctors more Christianity, it wouldn't make any difference which you called in - if you had a good nurse.
Dunne, Finley Peter

More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than - I say more Muslims - a lot of Muslims have died - I don't know the exact count - at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill.
Bush, George W.

The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it's more like a tired feeling, really.
Poundstone, Paula

Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soul-less conditions. It is the opium of the people.
Marx, Karl

The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
Shaw, George Bernard

Impiety, n.: Your irreverence toward my deity.
Bierce, Ambrose

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
Lennon, John

If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides.
Proverb, Old Yiddish

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
Adams, John

God made so many different kinds of people. Why would he allow only one way to serve him?
Buber, Martin

God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.
Neitzsche, Friedrich

It is fear that first brought gods into the world.
Arbiter, Petronius

The church is the great lost and found department.
Short, Robert

Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.
Diderot

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
Sagan, Carl

"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q. E. D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Adams, Douglas

Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.
Bierce, Ambrose

I do not believe in revealed religion - I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without speculating on another.
Byron, George Gordon

I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.
Vidal, Gore

If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.
Hayes, Judith

Moral: a peerless maxim enumerated by God in his Holy Bible, such as that of Deut. 23:1, if your testicles are crushed or your male member missing, you must never enter a sanctuary of the Lord.
Morgan, Donald

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Lama, Dalai

I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck.
Unknown, Author

I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do.
Gulledge, D. Dale

I like the silence of a church, before the service begins better than any preaching.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo

It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
Mencken, H.L.

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.
Ingersoll, Robert Green

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.
Vonnegut, Kurt

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
Poe, Edgar Allen

A religion without the element of mystery would not be a religion at all.
Lewis, Edwin

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.
Baraka, Imamu Amiri

When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned.
Ingersoll, Robert Green

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?"
Dillard, Annie

The idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should the human race think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in this unique relation to its maker? Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and squeaking "for our sakes was the world created."
Apostate, Julian the

I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels.
Buck, Pearl S.

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
Freud, Sigmund

No religion is a true religion that does not make men tingle to their finger tips with a sense of infinite hazard.
Hocking, William Ernest

Men rarely, if ever, manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
Heinlein, Robert

Follow Descartes! Do not give up the religion of your youth until you get a better one.
Fischer, Martin H.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.
Sagan, Carl

No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.
Shaw, George Bernard

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
Mencken, H.L.

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.
Unknown, Author

I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile woman, shave on a Saturday night and, most especially, never to shave a Gentile woman on a Saturday night.
Allen, Woody

God - but a word invoked to explain the world.
Lamartine, Prat de

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Mencken, H.L.

The whole point of Christianity is that everyone in the world, from Charles Manson to Mother Teresa, deserves to go to hell.
Ningen, Sean

Art, science, philosophy, religion - each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience.
Abbey, Edward

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
Lippmann, Walter

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law, it is administered with subhuman efficiency.
Ambler, Eric

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
Hume, David

How orderly philosophical is the landscape, are all the inhabitants of this World! It is the creation of a god who "ever plays the geometer."
Huxley, Aldous

All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.
Ladman, Cathy

My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I'm willing to give Him the chance.
McLaughlin, Mignon

A faith of convenience is a hollow faith.
Mulcahy, Father

My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it.
Bunyan, John

If Jesus Christ came back today and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.
Allen, Woody